The name of the tank Colonel Swinton explained was originally a bit of camouflage. People who saw them in the process of erection variously described them as snowplows for the Russian front and water tanks for the armies in Egypt. The latter name stuck. And it may not be generally known that this mechanical beast of war is divided into two sexes.
“Some tanks are armed with small guns firing shells,” said Colonel Swinton. “These are used especially against machine gun nests. They are popularly known in the tank unit as males. Other tanks carry machine guns and are intended primarily for use against enemy infantry. They are the females. There is no difference in the construction.”
Colonel Swinton was detailed from his post in the British War Cabinet to act as assistant to Lord Reading in his mission to the United States to tighten the bonds of efficiency between the two countries in their war programs.
During the fall of 1914, Colonel Swinton was the English official eye-witness of the fighting in Flanders and France. Before that he was perhaps best known to the general public as a writer of romances in which was skillfully woven the technique of war. One of his stories, “The Defense of Duffer’s Drift,” is used as a text-book at West Point.
NOT A SELF-STARTER
“Sam, you ought to get in the aviation service,” a Chicago man told a negro last week. “You are a good mechanic and would come in handy in an aeroplane. How would you like to fly among the clouds a mile high and drop a few bombs down on the Germans?”
“I ain’t in no special hurry to fly, Cap,” the negro answered. “When wese up ’bout a mile high, s’pose de engine stopped and de white man told me to git out an’ crank?”